New commission to unify inspections

The forthcoming Commission for Social Care Inspection will bring
most sectors involved in delivering care services under the same
inspection process for the first time, chief inspector of social
services Denise Platt told the conference.

The CSCI is to take on most of the inspection and regulation roles
now carried out by the Social Services Inspectorate and National
Care Standards Commission when it begins operating next year.

Platt said the new inspectorate would validate all statistics
produced by local authorities and non-statutory organisations
carrying out work in the care sector, and would assign star ratings
for social services departments.

It would measure organisations against national standards –
including how social services departments commission care services
– and would produce an annual report to parliament that detailed
how budgets were spent, she said.

“It is going to have more information than it knows what to do
with,” she told delegates. “But how it uses that information to
help you is going to be one of the things that will need to be
looked at.”

The government is still deciding the structure of the new
organisation’s senior management and how it will be funded. 

– Platt told delegates that the Choice Protects review of fostering
services had uncovered “a real antipathy” among local authorities
towards the independent fostering sector. She said there had been a
“stand-off” between the sectors and that Choice Protects would work
at bringing fostering services and residential home providers
closer together.